


Cover your Ears

by Many_Nine



Series: Sometimes Jon goes home [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A lot of Fears, Archivist!Jon, Body Horror, Martin is still lonely, Nothing is nice and Everything hurts, Pining Jon (implied), So if any of those trigger you you know what to do, Spoiler for Episode 142: Scrutiny, The Buried - Freeform, The Eye, The Flesh - Freeform, The Lonely - Freeform, the vast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21922087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Many_Nine/pseuds/Many_Nine
Summary: Jon is on his way home after a long day in the Archives.How much can he fuck that up?A lot apparently...
Series: Sometimes Jon goes home [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1607515
Comments: 5
Kudos: 58





	Cover your Ears

**Author's Note:**

> Mentioned Fears in order of appearance: Buried, Eye, Vast, Lonely, Flesh, Spider, Contamination
> 
> Please stay safe everyone!

Jon is sitting in the Tube. It's part of his new routine.

Take the Tube, get home, go to sleep.

He hates it. The train is cramped and full and when the stop is announced nobody makes space for him to get off. He feels like nobody got off at all, only more people getting on. It's so much more cramped now. Crushing, full, tight. Oh. It's tight. _So-tight-too-tight-he-cannot_ -

There is a juttering halt and suddenly there is space again. A stream of people leaving the Tube and- No, he isn't alone. It is still full. But not. Not crushing anymore.

He swallows. Something catches in his throat. He tries to swallow again. It hurts.

He looks up, at the time. Trying to discern when he can get out. He isn't used to this route yet. Maybe in a few weeks he will know all the stops by heart.

His gaze catches that of a woman sitting opposite. She looks out the window behind him. There is nothing remarkable about her. In her late thirties or early fourthies, heavy set, short hair. She seems rough, hard somehow.

There are lines marking her face and Jon thinks, how did time manage to mark her? She shouldn't have wrinkles. But she does. Her watery eyes are a colour indiscernable in the harsh light of the late night train.

Jon realizes he has stared too long when she looks pointedly next to his left ear, no longer gazing out of the window. Is she studying the back of his head? Is there something there? She looks slightly worried now.

There is definitely something at the back of his head. Jon raises his hand, smoothes it through his hair. The Archivist closes its Eye.

There is nothing there. What is she staring at? He swallows again. It hurts. Maybe he is getting down with a cold? As soon as he is home he will look if his throat is swollen.

He wishes he could do it here. Open his mouth, take a photo with his phone. Study it. But it would be weird with so many ppl around.

They are watching him. Do they know what he is thinking? The woman is still watching the back of his head. _Still-watching-always-watching-stop-watching-me_ makes him want to turn around. He surpresses a snort at the realization that he is nervous. An avatar of the everwatching Eye afraid of being watched...

Suddenly, a shiver runs down his spine, amusement gone and the woman opposite him moves uncomfortably. The Archivist hasn't stopped staring. He knows she is unremarkable.

But the Archivist also Knows that she has survived an encounter with the Vast. He stands up.

Sits down next to her. Opens his mouth to ask: "Can i?"

But he knows that isn't what comes out. Isn't what he is truly saying _"Tell me."_ is more like it. She looks away, at a young man a few rows away. Maybe she wants to ask for help. But she doesn't. She just... _Starts telling him._

About her childhood. About the day, when she was four when she nearly drowned.

About the slimy hand on her ankle about all that water on top of her, too much for the tiny pond she and her family had decided to take a dip in. _Too-much-to-wide-there-is-no-ground_ had her in its grasp.

Her father had seen her struggle and raised her from the water, in his arms. _Her savior_ , she said while blinking away tears.

She told him about her second encounter, ten years later. When she has long since stopped so much as taking a bath. She had been too afraid to take the boat on her family's trip to Spain. Threwn a whole tantrum over it. And her father, kindly, had decided that the plane was cheaper anyway.

And how when they were high up and she had glanced out the window, all she had seen was the ocean beneath her and the sky all around her and suddenly, she hadn't been able to feel the seat she was sitting on anymore. She had felt completely without weight, completely alone, caught by Virtigo, drowning next to the vast blues that tried to eat her. Again, her father had taken her hand and saved her.

But it kept happening.

The third was when she was 24 in a galerie, a painting called "The Blue", only a hand on her shoulder grounding her, as her father asked about the collection.

And once again when she was 34. _I_ _t had been a computer screen for God's sake_ , she nearly yells in Jon's face, but her voice breaks and she turns to sobbing laughter.

He drinks in her fear and terror and she is lauging still, when she tells him that she'd turned 44 a month ago. Her father dead, for 6 years now. There is guilt in her, buried deep, for feeling more afraid about her impending doom than sad that he doesn't exist anymore.

She looks at him as if he could give her certainty, as if he could help her. She asks: "I don't suppose I will turn 45 will I?" and Jon wants to take her hand, to ground her in reality, guide her out of the Vast, as the Archivist just shakes it's head and says: "'Suppose not."

A beat later: "Thank you for your time."

Then he left. The Train had been standing on the final station for a long time now. The woman is all alone in the cart. The only person around.

Jon decides to walk home.

It will take a few hours, but maybe he deserves that. As some kind of punishment.

He had promised not to do it again. _Promised_. Tomorrow he will tell Basira. And Daisy.

And Martin. If Martin even wanted to know. And they will decide what to do with him. Maybe Martin will look at him. Make him a cuppa tea. Worry written over his face as Daisy and Basira debate his future. Or maybe Martin would just walk through him.

Jon doesn't want to find out if he feels just as insubstantial as he looks lately.

That is a later problem he tells himself. For now though. For now he enjoyes his walk.

His brain is silent, he feels warm and tired and the gnawing hunger inside is gone. The nightlights of London's empty streets are a blur in his slowly closing eyes, but he doesn't need to look to know where to walk. He has never been in this part of town before. But he knows where he is going. Where to go.

He is alone. Fog worms around his ankles like a content cat. He is utterly alone. _Alone-so-alone-nobody-else-is-here._

He shouldn't be alone. Not in a city this big. Fear feeds a cold string through his insides but before it can take hold he becomes aware of a group of young men at the corner of the street and everything is alright again.

They are laughing and their speech is slurred. He assumes they're students. He smiles as he paints their supposed life in his mind's eye. One of them tries to get wasted tonight because he completely blew his exams, Jon tells himself. It's the one leaning against the lamppost. The other drinks to give himself enough courage to ask out his crush later this night and the third-

John stops in his tracks, stops and stares.

The boy's fingertips. They are red. He should not be able to see it from this distance. Not in this bad light.

But Jon knows that the boy's fingertip are red. There is blood, brown and crusted around and under his nails, but his fingertips. They are red.

His lips too. They have tiny indendts, and Jon really should not be able to see this, but he does. The Boy's lips have marks where he bites himself from time to time. And these marks, just like the fingertips are red as a sugar apple, _red-as-blood-please-do-not-eat-me_.

John knows then, Knows that the boy has survived an encounter with the Flesh.

He won't survive his coming encounter with the Slaughter though. The Archivist considered Asking the Boy. It could ask, and have two meals in one night.

Jon shakes his head violently. He swallows and it catches in his throat. It hurts. He won't he tells himself. He has _promised_. The Archivist plants a thought about the Magnus Institute in the Boy's head.

Jon goes on with his long walk home. Two in one night. Encounters with the Fears aren't very common. Survivors of them are even less. But they crossed his path.

Two in one night. It was an offering he Understood suddenly. An offering from the Powers to the Archive. He walkes on.

He is alone. But he isn't _Lonely_.

The streets are smattered with people. A few late stragglers there, a group of friends over there, a bar with open doors, lights and loud voices streaming out of it. The streets are empty without being empty and the night is full of light without being bright.

It's noisy and soothing. The Archivist feels _not-alone_. Connected to every single human in London.

 _A-thread-binding-everyone-together_ and there is something inside Jon whispering * **Knock Knock** *

He is too tired to smash this whisper down as deep as it should be.

He closes his eyes and opens them very slowly, and thought he knows that it had taken him a good part over two hours to get to his appartment building, he Knows that he has only blinked 10 times until he opened the door.

Before he can succumb to slumber on his thin mattress though, he once again feels the hurt in the back of his throat and gets up to get himself a glass of water. The plumbing in the kitchen isn't yet connected. He should really take care of that soon.

Standing in the bathroom of his sparsely funished flat he tries to swallow. He nearly chokes.

He spits the water out, breathing heavily and flips on the light switch.

He glares at his reflection. Slowly, he opens his mouth. There at the back of his tongue, something moves. His first irrational thought is * _Worm_ * later: * _Spider_ *

But then, it moves again.

Convulsing. Almost as if his tongue is- blinking?

His vision shifts and suddenly the Archivist has an Eye more with which too see.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my take on after 142 Archivist!Jon. I hope you liked it.  
> Hit me with yyour criticism or leave a kudo if you want.


End file.
